St Catherine of Alexandria

1599-1600
Stucco
San Bernardo alle Terme, Rome

Camillo Mariani trained in the school of Alessandro Vittoria and late sixteenth-century Venetian sculpture, where the emphasis lay in formal elegance allied to direct and simple gestures. These features emerge notably in his large stucco figures for the Roman church of San Bernardo alle Terme, works which have rightly been compared to late Veronese as well as Vittoria.

The brightness of Mariani's huge stucco figures melds with the background against which they are set, creating a luminous play that recalls Mariani's roots in Vicenza: he had learned his greatest lessons from the sculptor Alessandro Vittoria.